It’s often said we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Yet how often do we judge people by appearances? Many “unlikely” people have come to faith in God. As we respond to Jesus’ great commission, it’s important we see every person as a potential citizen of God’s eternal kingdom.

<p>It’s often said we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Yet how often do we judge people by appearances? Many “unlikely” people have come to faith in God. As we respond to Jesus’ great commission, it’s important we see every person as a potential citizen of God’s eternal kingdom.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

It Is Written

John Bradshaw

Don’t Judge a Book

Let's pray together before we open the Bible and we'll expect that God will speak to our hearts.

Father in heaven, for the privilege of being able to open your word, we are very grateful.

I pray that you won't let the limitations of fallen humanity prevent your spirit from doing a great work.

So guide us by your Holy Spirit, we pray, gratefully, in Jesus' name.

It was his first ever visit to a church quite like this and he was not aware that the habit was not for people to come out to church midweek.

He thought everyone would be there, but it seemed to him as though there was a law passed that said don't come in the middle of the week.

When he got to the church, there was the pastor, 5 elderly ladies, and 2 middle-aged men.

And here he was walking into the church for the very first time with his long hair, his old overcoat, his faded jeans, with an earring in 1 ear, with a scruffy scraggly sort of a beard, and with shoes riddled with holes, they looked like moths had eaten them." So what does a congregation do with someone like that?

A young man received a handbill in the mail.

It was advertising a series of meetings that would focus on the prophecies of the Bible.

This was back in the days when it was still rebellious to have an earring.

A denim jacket that was decorated with metal studs.

He looked like he'd come directly from gang headquarters.

Not the sort of person you would automatically be inclined to trust.

Maybe not the sort of person you would want to be around.

A church member made the comment and said, "...that guy will never be baptized." In fact, both men were baptized on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Both of them shaved, cut their hair, took out their earrings, changed their clothing somewhat and became ministers of the gospel.

When I first walked into a church, nobody was thinking, this guy will hold a Bible and preach God's Word 1 day.

They were thinking more along the lines of, what have we here?

This character must have got lost on his way to somewhere else.

And I'm sure some of them were thinking, We had better make sure our valuables are secure.

Well, actually I suspect you can, and that from time to time maybe we all have and perhaps even still do.

But God does not judge a book by its cover.

The prophet Samuel was told by God to call a man named Jesse to a sacrifice.

Knowing that he was to anoint the next king, he saw a young man named Eliab walk by, 1 of Jesse's sons.

He said to himself, surely this is the Lord's anointed.

But 1 Samuel 16 in verse 7 says, but the Lord said unto Samuel, look not on his countenance or on the height of his stature because I have refused him.

For man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." God looks on the heart.

Some years ago I was in India and I was in the home village of It Is Written's Eyes for India physician Dr.

Jacob provides, as an ophthalmologist, eye surgery on many very poor people who couldn't get access to or afford cataract surgery.

As we were talking in his hometown, right by the first school he ever attended, humble little school, He told me how missionaries from the church school, 40 or so miles from his house, came to visit his parents.

They told Jacob's parents they wanted to take him to the church school and give him for free an education, something that his parents could never afford.

His parents said, no, they would never allow it.

You can't take our boy, our only son, our youngest child.

The school folks reasoned, we have a sponsor.

Your child will get such a good education.

And they allowed the church school people to take their little boy away to the church elementary school.

He was sponsored through elementary school and through high school as well.

Now he didn't have a sponsor to enable him to go to university, but then a sponsor came along and he went to University and then he went to medical school and he specialized in ophthalmology.

Today he performs a very precise cataract surgery.

It's a complicated surgery, a delicate surgery that he makes look simple.

I've timed him at 1 minute and 40 seconds for an entire cataract surgery on an eye.

He has performed 465 cataract surgeries in a single day.

So I asked him there in his home village, if you had not had the opportunity to get that education, what would you be doing today?

He looked down, he paused, and over there in the distance, there was a young man herding buffalo.

They would take buffalo from 1 patch of grass to another, to another, to another, to another.

And Jacob looked over there, He looked at me and he said, most likely I would be herding buffalo today.

He said, well, most likely about as much as about 4 US dollars a week.

Here was a young man born to herd buffalo.

Now, the other alternative was his dad had a patch of ground where coconut trees were growing.

Maybe he would have done something with the coconuts, except as I talked to him, he said that it wasn't even worth the family's time harvesting the coconuts.

He was born to herd buffalo, but inside a five- or six-year-old future buffalo herder was a highly skilled medical specialist, a philanthropist really, inasmuch as he gives so much of his time to people who won't ever be able to pay him for what he does.

I learned to look at Buffalo Herders differently.

Inside these poor young children, inside the neglected, inside the forgotten, is brilliance and achievement just waiting to be realized.

Inside the people that we see, there are missionaries waiting to come out.

Inside the lost people of this world are preachers and teachers and leaders and people who could change the world or change a great part of the world if only they were given the opportunity to do so.

As Paul wrote to the church in Rome, "...for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?

And How shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?

And how shall they hear without a preacher?

And when they're told, their lives so often change.

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Don’t Judge a Book

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